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Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Yad Vashem Studies IV: The Nazi Concentration Camps (2/4)
Summary: Structure and Aims, The Image of the Prisoner, The
Jews in the Camps. Operation Reinhard - Acts of Resistance
Followup-To: alt.revisionism
Organization: The Nizkor Project, Vancouver Island, CANADA
Keywords: Yad Vashem
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Archive/File: orgs/israeli/yad-vashem/yvs.camps.02
Last-modified: 1993/03/26
THE NAZI CONCENTRATION
CAMPS
Structure and Aims * The Image of the Prisoner
The Jews in the Camps
PROCEEDINGS OF THE FOURTH YAD VASHEM
INTERNATIONAL HISTORICAL CONFERENCE
Jerusalem, January 1980
YAD VASHEM
JERUSALEM 1984
SEVENTH SESSION
Chairman: Bela Vago
JEWISH PRISONER UPRISINGS IN THE TREBLINKA AND SOBIBOR
EXTERMINATION CAMPS
YITZHAK ARAD
B. Acts of Resistance and the Organization of the Revolt in
Treblinka
The organization of the underground was preceded by some successful
and some unsuccessful acts of resistance and escape attempts. These
actions were followed by cruel reprisals and punishment by the camp
authorities. The lessons learned from these actions influenced the
modes of operation of the underground and its plans.
Acts of Individual Resistance
The first act of resistance, which is mentioned in many testimonies,
was the killing of SS Unterscharfu"hrer Max Bialas by the Jew Meir
Berliner on September 10 or 11, 1942. Meir Berliner had arrived in
Treblinka from Warsaw a few days before in one of the transports of
the "big Aktion." At that time it was the practice to take out
several hundred people from each transport to work arranging the
belongings of the murdered; the same day or a few days later, the
group was liquidated and was replaced by other people selected from
new shipments. At the evening roll-call of the prisoners, Max Bialas
instructed those who had arrived that same day to line up on the
side. It was not clear who was to be liquidated -- the new arrivals
or those who had arrived earlier. At that moment Berliner jumped out
from the ranks of the prisoners, lurched toward Bialas and stabbed
him with a knife. A great commotion followed. The Ukranian guards
opened fire. Berliner was killed on the spot. and in the course of
the shooting more than ten other prisoners were killed and others
were wounded. When the tumult subsided the prisoners were lined up
again for roll-call. Christian Wirth, who was in Treblinka at the
time, arrived on the scene accompanied by Kurt Franz, the second in
command of the camp. Ten men were removed from the ranks and shot on
the spot in full view of all the others. On the following day,
during the morning roll-call, another 150 men were taken out, brought
to the Lazarett and shot there. Max Bialas died en route to the
military hospital in Ostrow. (Ibid., 231-232; Testimony of Eliyahu
Rosehberg, Yad Vashem Archives, hereafter, YVA), 0-3/4039.)
Following this event a new practice was introduced; a permanent group
of Jewish prisoners was now retained in the camp to carry out all
physical labor. The daily executions of Jewish prisoners was now of
limited scope and encompassed mainly the infirm and weak who were no
longer able to work and those who had committed violations even of
the most minor sorts. The place of those who were killed was taken
by new men selected from the transports slated for annihilation,
which continued to stream into the camp.
The lesson learned by the Jewish prisoners who worked in the camp was
that the cost of a courageous act like that performed by Berliner was
very high -- more than 160 Jews were executed in reprisal for the
killing of one SS man. In light of the fact that the Germans had
also changed their methods, instances of this sort did not recur. It
became clear that individual, spontaneous acts. Iike that of
Berliner, however admirable, were not the way to rescue, nor could
they even slow down the annihilation activities in the camp.
In his book 'A Year in Treblinka', Jacob Wiernik tells of another act
of individual resistance. One of the girls being herded into the gas
chambers grabbed a rifle from the hands of a Ukrainian guard, shot
and killed one Ukrainian and wounded two others. The girl was
caught, tortured and murdered. (The testimony of Jacob Wiernik was
taken down in Warsaw during the war and in 1944 was published in
Poland by the Polish underground. His testimony also appeared in
Yiddish in New York; see Jacob Wiemili, 'A Yor in Treblinke', New
York, 1944, 30.)
Group Resistance by Jews who Arrived in the Transports
In December 1942 a transport of about 2,000 Jews arrived in Treblinka
from Kiellbasin camp in the Grodno district. Jews from Grodno and
the towns of the region had been concentrated in this camp. Unlike
other transports, most of which arrived during the daylight hours,
this one arrived in the evening. The people were taken off the train
and brought into the camp surrounded by SS and Ukrainian guards. The
handling of this transport, like the others, was accompanied by
shouts, blows and firing into the air. The people were ordered to
undress, and some of them had already begun to run on the
Himmelstrasse toward the gas chambers. At this point it became clear
to the people where they were and what awaited them. Shouts were
heard: Don't obey the Germans! Don't undress! Scores of people from
the transport grabbed sticks, pulled out knives and fell on the
Germans and Ukrainians who surrounded them. According to one
testimony, one of the Jews pulled out a grenade and hurled it at the
Germans and Ukrainians, who opened fire on the crowd with rifles and
machine guns. A great tumult began as people ran in all directions.
But the barbed-wire fences preventedddd escape from the camp. It was
not long before the square was covered with the corpses of the
prisoners. In the end the Germans and Ukrainians quelled this act of
resistance, and the people were shoved into the gas chambers, some of
them still in their clothing. In this struggle it seems that three
SS men and Ukrainians were injured.
It should be noted that underground activity, the idea of resistance
and of going into the forests was very widespread among the Jews of
Grodno and its surroundings. Their psychological readiness for
resistance, the rumors that had reached them about the meaning of
Treblinka, the situation they encountered after getting off the train
and the cries of some of them to resist all led to the spontaneous
outburst. After that transports to Treblinka were brought in only
during daylight hours. (lbid., pp. 40-411; Shmuel Wilenberg,
"Treblinka -- ha-Mahane ve-ha-Mered," Yalkut Moreshet, No. 5, April
1966, pp. 30-31; testimony of Oskar Strawczynski, YVA, 0-3/3131; pp.
17-18.)
Escapes from the Camps
In the first months of the camp's existence scores of people escaped
from Treblinka. Some of them were caught, others managed to get
away. They reached the nearby ghettos and told what was going on in
Treblinka. Some of the escapees reached the Warsaw ghetto. One of
the first of these was Simcha Binem Laski, who was sent to Treblinka
from Warsaw at the end of July 1942. Four days after he arrived in
the camp, Simcha managed to escape. He got back to the Warsaw ghetto
in the beginning of August -- on the day that the "Children's Aktion"
was being carried out there. ("In Treblinke--Gviyat Edut," 'Fun
Lefstn Khurbn' , No. 3, October-November 1946, pp. 47-48.)
On September 13, 1942, Avraham (Jacob) Krzepicki escaped from
Treblinka after having been in the camp for eighteen days. He, too,
managed to reach the Warsaw ghetto and there provided testimony as to
what was occurring in Treblinka. (Krzepicki was a member of the
Jewish Fighting Organization and took part in the fighting in "the
brush makers" area in the Warsaw ghetto. His testimony in Ringelblum
Archives, YVA, M-10; see also Rachel Auerbach, Varshever
Tsevuos--Bagegenishn Aktivinein, Gorules 1933-1943, Tel Aviv, 1974,
p. 278.) Several of the escapees from Treblinka participated in the
Warsaw ghetto uprising, among them David Nowodworski, member of the
Jewish Fighting Organization and commander of a group of fighters,
and Lazar Szerszein, who was also the commander of a group of
fighters. (On David Nowodworski see Ysrael Gutman, Mered ha-Nazurim.
1963, p. 239; Avraham Levin, "Mi-Pinkaso Shel ha-More mi-Yehudiya."
Beit Lohamei ha-Geta'ot, 1969, p. 215; on Szerszein see Aryeh
Neiberg, Ha-Aharonim--be-Kez ha-Mered shel Getto Varsha, Tel Aviv,
1958, p. 98; Dokumenty i materialy do dziejow okupacji niemieckiej w
Polscc (hereafter, Dokumenty), Vol. lI, "Akcje' i wysicdlenia,
Warsaw, Lodz. Cracow, 1946, p. 343.)
At the time of the deportation of the Jews of Czestochowa, on January
4, 1943, a Jew by the name of Richter, who had also escaped from
Treblinka, attacked and wounded Lieutenant Rohn, the commander of the
gendarmerie that carried out the deportation. (Ibid., p. 290.)
At the end of October or beginning of November, two Treblinka
prisoners, assisted by others, managed to escape on the freight train
carrying the personal belongings of the murdered out of the camp. At
the end of November or beginning of December, seven people from the
group that worked on the station platform were caught trvinc to
escape by train. They were taken to the lazarett and shot there hy
Kurt Franz. The camp prisoners were called to a special roll-call
which Franz informed them that for each escapee ten Jews working in
the camp would be shot. (Gitta Sereny, Into that Darkness -- From
Mercy Killing to Mass Murder, London, 1974, p. 196.)
At the beginning of winter, under cover of darkness, another four
prisoners escaped. They slipped out of the barrack, cut the
barbed-wire fence and got away. As an immediate reprisal twenty sick
people were taken out and shot on the spot. (Wilenberg, op. cit.,
pp. 36-37)
The escape attempts continued, the threats notwithstanding. Two
youths from Czestochowa caught trying to escape were hung naked by
their feet. All the Jews in the camp were forced to witness their
torture, and only after they were kept hanging from their feet for
several hours were they shot to death. (Testimony of Strawczynski,
op. cit., p. 29; testimony of Kalman Tajgman, WA, (0-3/1586.)
There were escape attempts also from the camp's extermination area.
A group of seven people succeeded in digging a tunnel from the
barracks near the camp's southern fence. In the course of digging,
they had to deal with the serious problem of what to do with the
dug-up earth. They found a solution to this problem and completed a
tunnel 5 meters long, from the barracks to the outside of the first
fence. The digging was done at night, during the month of December
1942, and despite the secrecy of the work many of the men in the
barracks -- there were then about 250 of them -- knew about it. They
kept the secret, even though they knew that the group's escape was
liable to endanger the others. The escape was carried out on the
night of December 31, 1942. Five men succeeded in getting through
the tunnel and out beyond the fences, but then the Ukrainian sentry
noticed them and opened fire. The entire camp was called into
action. The prisoners were removed from the barracks and inspected.
Five were missing. It was snowing that night, but the Germans and
Ukrainian guards went in pursuit of the escapees. The escapees had
reached a nearby village, but were caught while trying to rent a
cart. One succeeded in escaping, but the other four were caught
after a struggle. One was shot on the spot, and the other three were
brought back to the camp. After they were tortured, they were hanged
in full view of all the prisoners, who had been lined up in roll-call
formation. The last prisoner to be hanged shouted from the gallows
"Down with the nation of Hitler, long live the Jewish people."
(Wiernik, op. cit., pp. 41-42; testimony of Rosenberg, op. cit.,
pp. 9-10.)
During the existence of the Treblinka camp scores of people did
succecd in escaping, but scores of others were caught, tortured and
executed. The possibilities for escape were greater in the early
months, and it was then that most of the successful escapes were
carried out. As time passed escape became more difficult and more
complicated. Security measures were improved, and the system of
barbed-wire fencing around the camp was reinforced and improved.
There were three fences: an inner barbed-wire fence 3-4 meters high
and camouflaged by tree boughs; a second network of tank obstacles
laid with barbed-wire fencing; and a third, outer barbed-wire fence.
In addition, parts within the camp itself were also fenced, including
the prisoners' quarters. Six guard towers were erected, one of them
in the center of the extermination area, and, as a result, there was
constant observation of what was going on in the camp during the day.
At night the prisoners were shut up in the barracks, which were
guarded by Ukrainian sentries. The intensified punitive
measures -- the torture and hanging of the captured escapees and the
announcement that for each prisoner who escaped ten others would be
executed--also had their effect. The snow and the tracks left in the
snow, which gave the escapees away. also made escape more difficult.
The last escape attempts were made at the beginning, of the winter,
in December 1942, but they ended in failure. It became evident that
the ways of escape that had been tried heretofore now stood virtually
no chance of succeeding. It became necessary to search for different
ways, more organized and complex. Indeed, at the beginning of 1943,
new ideas began to take shape regarding struggle, escape and rescue.
The Organization of the Underground
In the winter of 1942/1943, a change occurred in the intensity of the
activity in Treblinka. The number of transports gradually diminished
and almost stopped altogether in February/March 1943. The
annihilation of the Jews of the General-Government was completed for
the most part, although from time to time a few transports did arrive
from the Bialystok-Grodno district (Generalbezirk). The vast piles
of possessions taken from the murdered, which had been heaped up in
the square near the platform and had been part of the permanent
scenery of the camp, disappeared. They had been packed and sent off
to destinations in Germany and elsewhere. As the stream of
transports ceased, it was no longer necessary to sort the belongings
of the dead, and the fear descended on the Jewish prisoners that they
were slated to be liquidated soon, together with the camp as a whole.
Rumors about a selection in which some of the men would be taken to
the gas chambers hovered in the air constantly. Moreover, the
reduced number of transports led to a shortage of food and clothing,
which had been obtained from what the victims left behind.
Starvation and the typhus that broke out in the winter claimed many
victims, and that added to the gloom among the prisoners.
The news from the front about the German military defeat at
Stalingrad--which the prisoners learned about from newspapers
smuggled to them by the boy prisoners who worked in the quarters of
the SS--was received with joy. At the same time fears intensified
that with the end of Nazi Germany approaching, the last of the Jews
would be liquidated. (Sereny, op. cit., pp. 210-212; testimony of
Strawczynski, op. cit. p.. 26, 47; Wiernik, op. cit., p. 37; J.
Rajgrodzki, "Jedenascie miesiecy w obozie zaglady w
Treblince--Wspomnienia," Biuletyn Zydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego
(BZIH), No. 25, 1958, p. 109.)
That was the atmosphere in which the idea of escape and rebellion
gradually took shape in talks among the prisoners in the work places
and barracks. The lessons of previous acts of resistance in the camp
and the recent unsuccessful escape attempts made it clear that new
ways had to be found. The only realistic possibility seemed to be a
mass revolt and organized escape by all the prisoners by means of
force.
When and within which group the idea of rebellion first occurred
cannot be stated with any certainty. (According to Strawczynski, op.
cit., p. 47, the idea of revolt was first raised by the carpenters'
group.) It seems reasonable to assume that the idea occurred to
several groups at more or less the same time in talks among the
"court Jews" and among the "square Jews." In preparation for the
rebellion, an "organizing committee" was formed, comprised of
prisoners from both groups. On this committee were Dr. Chorazycki,
who was physician to the SS men, Zeev Kurland, the Capo of the
Lazarett, Zelo Bloch, a lieutenant in the Czech army who had arrived
in a transport from Theresienstadt, Salzberg of the tailors' group,
the agronomist Sadowicz and others.
Even before the plan for the uprising was formulated, the "organ-
izing committee" tried to acquire arms by bribing the Ukrainian
guards. These guards used to slip food to the prisoners in exchange
for money and gold, and it was hoped that they would also agree to
supply weapons. The Jewish prisoners, especially the "gold Jews,"
maintained caches of money and valuables that had been taken from
what had been left by the victims. Even though the Germans often
threatened that prisoners possessing money and valuables would be
executed, the prisoners were not deterred and continued to hide
sizable quantities of money and valuables, Now these holdings were to
serve as a source for the acquisition of arms. One of the first
attempts was made by a Jewish prisoner named Moshe, who served as the
Capo of the carpentry shop. He gave an Ukrainian with whom he was in
contact money and asked him to get him a pistol. The money was
taken, but the gun was not brought. In spite of this failure, the
efforts to acquire arms via the Ukrainians continued, but it was
decided that in addition an attempt would be made to remove weapons
from the camp arms store. In this luck was with the prisoners. One
day a Jewish locksmith was ordered to repair the lock on the arms
store door. In the course of the repair, he prepared a key for the
underground "organizing committee." (Dokumenty, op. cit., Vol. I,
Obozy, p. 188; Wilenberg, op. cit., p. 46; Tanhum Greenberg,
"Ha-Mered be-Treblinka--Kitei Edut," Yalkllt Mo-reshet, No. 5, April
1966, p. 61)
In the second half of March 1943, the underground suffered a serious
loss. Zelo Bloch, the military man on the "organizing committee,"
was transferred to the extermination area. The reasons for his
transfer are not clear. It is very unlikely that it was in any way
related to his underground activity, for had there been the slightest
suspicion against him the Germans would have immediately killed him.
His transfer was most likely a result of the lessened activity in the
camp and the need for more men in the extermination area. After
Himmler visited the camp at the end of February or early March 1943,
the burning of the corpses was begun in the "extermination area" so
as to remove traces of the murder that had taken place there; for
this more men were needed. Typhus also had claimed many victims in
the extermination area, which further increased the manpower shortage
there. (Sereny, op. cit., pp. 210-211) Another underground
activist, Adolf Friedman, was transferred together with Block.
The efforts to get arms from the Ukrainian guards continued. This
time Dr. Chorazycki, one of the heads of the "organizing committee"
who by virtue of his work had daily contact with the Ukrainians, took
upon himself the handling of this matter. As a bribe for the guards
he carried on him a sum of money. One day early in April 1943, the
deputy camp commander, Kurt Franz, entered the infirmary and
discovered the money (possibly after being informed by the Ukraini-
ans). When Chorazycki realized that his situation was hopeless, he
rushed at Franz with a surgical knife. A struggle ensued in which
Chorazycki did not manage to injure Franz, but did succeed in
swallowing poison that he kept on him for just such an occasion. The
Germans' efforts to revive him were to no avail. In order to deter
the other prisoners from thinking about escape they were called to a
roll-call at which the dead body of Chorazycki was abused. A
thorough search was conducted among the "gold Jews" who were
suspected of having supplied the money. They were threatened that if
they did not confess they would be executed. They were severely
beaten and tortured, but denied any connection with the affair.
(Greenberg, op. cit., p. 60; Wilenberg, op. air., pp. 52-53;
testimony of Strawczynski, op. cit., p. 38)
In spite of Chorazycki's death and Zelo Bloch's transfer to the other
part of the camp, the "organizing committee" continued with the
preparations for the uprising. The "camp elder" Rakowski was now
brought in on the secret of the underground activity. Rudek
Lubernicki, who was in charge of the garage and later played an
important role in the uprising, now also joined the underground. The
members of the underground, who numbered several score, were
organized into several groups.
In the latter part of April 1943, it was decided to remove weapons
from the arms store by using the key in the committee's possession.
The arms store was located between two barracks where Germans lived;
there was access to it also from within the barracks. The job of
removing the weapons, during the daytime, when the barracks'
occupants were not there, was given to a group of Jewish boys who
worked in the SS quarters cleaning up and polishing the Germans'
boots. A group of boys headed by Markus, a young man from Warsaw who
was in charge of them, and three other boys removed two cases
containing grenades from the storeroom and surreptitiously got them
to the shoemakers' workshop. When the grenades were examined. it
was discovered that the detonators, which were kept in a separate
box, were missing. The grenades were returned in the same way they
had been removed so that the Germans would not find out that they
were missing. This failure led to a postponement of the uprising.
(Greenberg, op. Cit., pp. 61-62.)
After the uprising planned for the latter half of April 1943 failed
to take place, there was a decline in the underground's activity.
Once again there were thoughts of individual escape. One of those
who planned to escape was Rakowski, together with his girlfriend
Cesia Mendel and others. Seeking collaboration. they bribed a
Ukrainian guard, but the SS began to get suspicious. They conducted
a search in the room where the Capos lived and found large quantities
of money and gold in the blankets and walls. Rakowski claimed that
the treasure they found did not belong to him and that he was unaware
of its existence. He claimed that the money and gold had probably
been hidden by Chorazycki, who had since died but who had lived in
that room before. But his arguments were not accepted, and he was
taken to the Lazarett where he was shot. After Rakowski's death the
Germans, at the beginning of May 1943, appointed Galewski "camp
elder." (Galewski, an engineer by profession, served as camp elder
before Rakowski ; see also
testimony of Strawczynski, op. cit., pp. 51-52; Sereny, op. cit.,
p. 195)
In May and the beginning of June the activity of the "organizing
committee" and underground activity in general continued to slacken.
But the cessation of the transports and the information from the
extermination area that the removal of the bodies from the pits and
their cremation was nearing completion and that soon there would be
no more "work" led to a reawakening of underground activity.
At this time the "camp elder" Galewski joined the underground
leadership, and with him came Monik, an energetic Warsaw youth who
was Capo of the skilled workers, and others as well. The "organizing
committee" was reactivated. It was headed by Galewski and had about
ten members, most of whom had been members of the previous
"committee." The activity was conducted in the greatest possible
secrecy, and the camp authorities did not learn of it despite the
informers they had among the prisoners. The fact that the committee
was headed by the "camp elder" and that its members included most of
the Capos and heads of work groups (Kurland, Monik, Sadowicz and
others) made its activity somewhat easier. 'The meetings generally
took place in the tailors' workshop. The number of members in the
underground grew steadily. On the eve of the uprising, in Camp A
there were about sixty people, who comprised about 10 percent of the
camp's prisoner population. They were organized by places of work
into sub-units of five to ten people, headed by a commander.
(Testimony of Strawczynski, op cit., pp. 50-55; Stanislaw Kon,
"Ha-Mered be-Treblinka," 'Sefer Milhamot ha-Geta'ot, 1954, pp
536-537)
[Continued in yad_vashem YVS.Camps.03]

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